Larks, Owls and Hummingbirds: Which are you? Blog 119

Morning!

Its quiet and still this morning - just the sound of the birds by the river. It really doesn't matter what time I go to sleep at night - I am always awake by 6am at the latest. A friend was making me laugh yesterday about the relative pros and cons of being a lark or an owl! As a lifelong signed up member of the Lark Club I sometimes feel a bit like the kid who gets sent home early.

I quite like the idea of being an owl, but even as an 18-year old I couldn't do much later than midnight in a club!

To me Owls seem more sophisticated and mysterious than we larks and they come alive in the dark - meanwhile we hobble to get the last train home and collapse comatose in our beds before the witching hour, only to spring out of bed transformed a few hours later. Larks and owls who live together often make a good team, especially when children are young. The predispositions lend themselves to shift work, although there are hidden dangers in adhering to this pattern too faithfully! 

It would seem the whole Lark/Owl thing is simply a matter of different body clocks. I know that I am most productive in the day from 5am-11am, and can get through a tremendous amount of work in that six hours. Its quiet and undisturbed by emails or phone calls - and I usually line up my draft emails to hit the recipient's desks by 8.am at the earliest, otherwise people do react as if you are a little strange working at this hour. Truth is a nice siesta fits this rhythm too, although not always possible in the sturm and drang of fast paced working. Left to my own devices a spanish style siesta is often an activity of choice.

One in ten of us is an up-at-dawn, raring-to-go early bird, or lark. About two in ten are owls, who enjoy staying up long past midnight. The rest of us, those in the middle, whom we call hummingbirds, may be ready for action both early and late. Some hummingbirds are more larkish, and others, more owlish. Animal studies suggest that being a morning person or an evening person may be built into our genes, like having red hair or blue eyes. This may explain why those of us who are early-to-bed, early-to-rise types, or late-to-bed, late-to-rise types, find it so hard to change our behaviour.


What Type of Bird Are You?

If you like to linger over your coffee to read the morning paper, you're probably more of a lark. Owls often skip breakfast, and they're always rushing to get to work in the morning. If you do your washing or surf the Internet at midnight, you're probably an owl. If you occasionally get up at dawn to go fishing, and sometimes stay up long past your usual bedtime at parties, you're a happy hummingbird.
Some of us think of ourselves as night people, but human beings can't truly claim the night as home territory. We are programmed to function best in the daytime. We can't see in the dark. Even if we insist on flip-flopping our schedules to work at night, Mother Nature isn't fooled. Night is still the down time on the body clock. Morningness and eveningness are as far apart as humans get.

Cape Cod Morning - Edward Hopper

Artist Edward Hopper often portrayed these extremes. In Cape Cod Morning, a woman already dressed for the day gazes out her living room window at trees bathed in dawn light. In Nighthawks, a man and woman in evening clothes sip coffee in an all-night diner.

Nighthawks - Edward Hopper

Lark and owl traits influence many aspects of daily life, including when we feel most alert and when we sleep best. These traits determine when we most enjoy meals, exercise, sex, and other activities. They also affect when we choose to work, or would, if we could.

If you're a lark like me, you probably wouldn't enjoy a job in a late night bar. If you're an owl, you'd have to struggle to report the morning news. Lark/owl traits may play a bigger role in job choice than most of us suspect. Casualty doctors for example, spend more time working at night throughout their lives than doctors in other specialties. 

Most of us adapt pretty well to life's demands. Cartoonist Scott Adams started Dilbert while holding down a full-time job, penning it between 5 A.M. and 7 A.M. before going to work. That makes me feel less alone! Although I was thrilled when I found out that our Patron Jon Snow blogs at the same time as I do! 

"I'm quite tuned into my rhythms," Adams says. "I never try to do any creating past noon. And I only exercise in late afternoon. I do the comic strip from 
5am to 7am. Then I write for a few hours. I only ink the strip in the afternoons or evenings when my hand is steady. I can't ink in the morning.
"I created my second career," he claimed, "by 'discovering' the morning."
In 1999, Dilbert made its television debut. He wrote "My schedule is completely reversed now, because of working in Hollywood," he reported. "They're night owls. So I sleep until 5am and then work off and on until midnight most nights. But I still don't do creative work in mid-afternoon. I do my mindless stuff, like inking or scanning then."

Like Adams, most of us view our schedules as a compromise between what we have to do, and what we would like to do. Most people say they would like to sleep later, for example. Students who seldom go to bed before 2am. almost certainly will turn off the lights earlier after they graduate and enter the daytime workforce, and they will become even more larkish after they become parents. They might complain, but most will manage. By the time they are in their sixties and over, most will be comfortable going to sleep and getting up earlier than they did when younger. All of us might feel and function better, though, if we could synchronise more of our required activities with our natural rhythms throughout our lives.

Indeed, the recent rise of flexitime in the workplace, allowing workers to start and stop as much as two or three hours earlier or later, as they wish, is a positive step in this direction. One in five full-time British workers now has flexible hours.

A gene may govern Owlish and Larkish behaviour in human beings. Daniel Katzenberg of Stanford University and his colleagues assessed morningness/ eveningness traits in 410 randomly sampled adults with a questionnaire. They also drew blood samples from the respondents, and examined the makeup of a gene called Clock known to exert influence over biological rhythms. Comparing results from the two tests, they estimated that the owls lagged ten to forty-four minutes behind larks in their preferred times for various activities and for sleep, a significant difference. Moreover, a particular pattern consistently appeared in part of the Clock gene in owls, but not in larks. Genetic studies such as this may prove a two-edged sword. They potentially could help workers decide which jobs suit them best. But they also could be used to discriminate against workers whose genetic traits do not correspond to an employer's criteria. That would be unfortunate, because lark/owl tendencies do not rule most people's lives. High motivation for all but extreme larks and owls probably has a much bigger impact on job success.

Time Tips
Larks who want to live more like owls, and owls who want to live more like larks can take advantage of recent research on the biological clock to ease that task. These tips won't change your basic make up-that's not possible-but they can help you adapt more comfortably to situational demands.


If you are a lark:
Spend time outside in the afternoon or early evening. This tactic should help you stay up later, and may help you sleep later in the morning, too.
Increase evening activity. A walk or light stretching will promote alertness. Socialising is more energising than reading or watching TV.
Sleep with blinds or curtains closed.Darkness tells your brain it's night time, the right time for sleep.Leave a dim night light on in hallways or bathroom in case you have to get up at night.

If you are an owl:
Sleep with blinds or curtains open, and let daylight wake you up naturally. It's a gentle process and much easier to take than the annoying buzz of an alarm clock. Set the alarm anyway.Walk outside as soon as possible after waking up. Exposure to daylight in the morning can make you more alert earlier in the day. One sleep specialist tells his patients, "Take your dental floss and step outside."

Since owls often leave things to the last minute, it may be hard to get up in time to have breakfast outdoors or to take a twenty minute walk. Trick yourself by setting the clock a few minutes fast. Close your eyes when you do it, so you won't know if the clock is five minutes or fifteen minutes fast. When rushing in the morning, you'll have a small safety net, but not enough to start making allowances for it. If you can't go outside immediately, have your morning coffee by the sunniest window in your home, or use a lighting device that provides artificial light of daylight intensity.Get up at the same time every day, including weekends and holidays. This tactic will anchor your biological clock at the desired time. If you go to sleep late one night, don't sleep in the next morning. Compensate for missed sleep with a twenty-minute midafternoon nap unless you find naps leave you foggy. In that case, go to bed fifteen minutes earlier the next night.
Do as much as you can the night before. Select the next day's clothes, put cereal boxes on the breakfast table, prepare school lunches. A morning routine helps owls function smoothly without having to think about what they're doing.
Keep evenings quiet. Don't exercise, start new projects, or watch TV "for just a few minutes" late at night. Reading, listening to music, and similar activities are good preludes to sleep. Have a regular bedtime snack such as milk or fruit. This ritual also helps program your body for bed.Use dim lights at night in the bathroom to avoid giving yourself a middle-of-the-night wake up call the next night.

Tips for Couples and Families:
Civility is the key to getting along despite individual differences  (I refer you to my earlier blog on manners!) - nothing excuses rudeness at any hour or under any circumstances, but perhaps we can excuse evening people from sociability until they have had their coffee! ASs a matter of common courtesy everybody is required to say, 'Good morning,' and to pass the sugar when asked and to reply to comments and questions addressed to them.... Being excused from sociability means that they may reply only by making 'Umm' and 'Uh' noises with the mouth closed, and need not engage much more in conversation at this point!

Summing Up
If you are right-handed, you may be able to learn to use your left hand. A Type A personality may learn to relax. An overweight person can slim down. In the same way, most larks and owls can manage most schedules as their jobs, families, or social lives demand. Some will feel more dissonance than others when they try to follow clocks at variance with their natural proclivities. Extreme larks and owls report the most problems. They may find it difficult, if not impossible, to function in some situations. They are not ill. They are not lazy. They are not lacking in motivation. Happily, in our increasingly twenty-four-hour world, there are plenty of spots where most larks, owls, and hummingbirds can find a secure perch.

Its a good job I wrote this post this morning as after a long day of creative activity, I much like Scott Adams can just about do an edit at this time of day (6pm)! 

So off for a bath and an early night - ready to blog again in the early hours tomorrow. Sleep well or play well - which ever takes your Owlish or Larkish fancy. See you in the morning - early! 

Ps: apparently we larks prefer baths and owls prefer showers? Observations and comments please.

Source material taken from The Body Clock Guide -  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Body-Clock-Guide-Better-Health/dp/0805056629